May 2018 - 3 weeks, one wedding and a villa, Day 14 - Gatorland, Boardwalk & Disney Springs

[Goosey-Lucy]

Thursday 17/05/18

We’d set the alarm for 8am today as we were off to Gatorland!
It was Rhoda and Dan’s last full day so we wanted to do something good.
We were out the door not too long after getting up and ready, although I didn’t make a note of what time we actually got to Gatorland, we did have to pick Rhoda and Dan up from their hotel on the way.

For some reason I didn’t write down how much it cost for us to get in but looking at the website its $29.99 plus TAX per adult, so roughly about 60 something $.
Walking in you’re led to a connection of raised boardwalks with different sections full of gators depending on their age. They’re did seem to be a lot of baby gators all piled in together in a fairly small space

The area that had the 3-5 year olds in (I think) had a lady nearby who was doing a bit of education over her headset, but you could also buy 3 fish on a pole for $5 to feed the younger gators. I threw my money at the lady and set off with my pole! It kind of felt like I was fishing, but I don’t think fishermen in the UK would have any gators snatch a fish off their pole!

We walked round for a bit looking at all the different age ranges of the gators, Rhoda bought 3 hot dogs from one of the keepers that you could throw into the fully grown massive ones. The catch to that plan was the bloody birds that would just snatch bits of the hot dog mid-air. There was a gigantic one that we just sort of aimed for his head and he caught them off us.

When you walk off the boardwalk area there’s different animal sections further back more on dry land. There was a section about leucitic and albino alligators, which I can’t remember the difference between now, but I think there was only about 12 leucitic alligators left in the world and Gatorland had rescued 3 of them.

Further down and more round towards the back was a couple of rescue crocodiles who had some funny background stories, but sadly ended up in sticky situations and needed rescuing from wherever they’d found themselves.

Somehow, we ended up in the petting zoo they have there and for a couple of $ you could buy ice cream cones filled with goat friendly kibble. This bit was hilarious because most of the goats would take some kibble off you and then not bother with you again, but there was one particular goat, who I suspect wasn’t the full ticket, just kept butting all the other goats out the way to get to us, even if we split up and stood either side of the goat area he’d run backwards and forwards between us shoving the others out the way!

Not long after that a group of schoolkids came in and we were soon out of there! At this point we were just sauntering around and came across bobcats, panthers and even a raccoon!

There was a second sort of boardwalk area you could walk across that covered a lake, obviously full of gators and birds mugging them! That second boardwalk popped you out by a kids water play area and the giant tortoises! They were HUGE!

By early afternoon we sort of felt we’d seen everything we wanted to see. There was a couple of shows that you could watch, but to be honest we’re not massively into that. Looking back now I really don’t think it’s worth $30 per adult, others might, but there’s only so much looking at alligators you can do

Of course as soon as we decided to leave it a massive storm rolled over and we were stranded in the gift shop for a little while, shame! Rhoda bought a couple of bits for her granddaughter and a t-shirt for herself and Dan.
After a little while of the rain not easing we decided just to run for our lives to the car and come up with a plan in the car. Soaked doesn’t cover it!

In the car Chris checked the rain radar and it looked like the rain was going to pass over very, very quickly. We thought we’d try our luck at mini-golf so headed over to Fantasia gardens, but they’d closed it due to the lightening nearby, Doh!

The rain had eased off at this point so we walked over to Boardwalk seeing as though we’d parked at Fantasia. Chris’s parents really enjoyed walking through Swan and Dolphin and round the Boardwalk, me and Chris love this little part of Disney so we were glad they enjoyed it as well

It started raining pretty hard again and we were feeling peckish so popped into the ESPN bar to see if they had any availability. It was dead in there so we managed to grab a table.
I loved the amount of TV’s there were in this place, including the toilet!

Shock horror, I didn’t write down what people had haha! I plan on getting better at that for our next trip!

It was still raining when we finished lunch and luckily there was a boat ready to go to Epcot so we hopped on there. Rhoda was after a Simba for her granddaughter (Chris’s brothers child, not ours! ) so we popped into Mouse Gear on our way to the buses.
Rhoda managed to get her hands on a Simba and many other things that Dan had to firmly tell her would not fit in the suitcase and we ran to the buses as we wanted to get to Disney Springs.

Our luck was in again and there was a bus waiting for us! We were whizzed away to Disney Springs and by the time we got there the rain had eased off. We had a walk around the newer marketplace area and up to the Christmas shop.
Rhoda had a new mission, to find her granddaughter a Rafiki! If you hadn’t guessed by now Summer is obsessed with Lion King! We had a good mooch around the Christmas shop where Rhoda managed to find a Rafiki, hurray!

Before today Chris had figured out if he flicked his umbrella outwards it popped up and clicked into place, so walking out of the store he decided to do this as it had started drizzling again and as he flicked it up the whole head of the umbrella just came flying off and landed about 5ft in front of him
All 4 of us were just in hysterics and this random Scottish woman walked past us laughing! For the rest of the evening me and Rhoda would just start giggling every now and again every time we thought about it!

Once we had controlled our laughter we made our way down to House of Blues for some dinner. We loved it in there, it had a great atmosphere and the service was fab! Chris had some kind of massive meat platter, I had ¼ of a fried chicken, Dan had fish tacos and Rhoda had a grilled chicken burger.
The food was just beautiful, but mine was absolutely enormous so I had to take most of it home!

It was quite late by the time we got out of there and we were all pretty tired so we made our way back to the car, dropped Rhoda and Dan at their hotel and went home, showered and into bed.

Tomorrow – Pool day